Starting VNCViewer by right clicking on Machine in Network Ne ighb ourhood

[Ingecom - SERRE Jean-Christophe]

David Barclay <david.b "at" staff.logicworld.com.au> wrote:
> 
> That said, if you make any headway - please post it to the list :-)

I took a look back at my code, and finally made it work for Win95!

I had found 3 ways of converting a pIDL to its path, and it appears that
way #2 is the only one that can convert it for a computer object --
there was errors and missing infos about the possible flags in my copy
of the Platform SDK, when I checked the online version on MSDN site, the
updated copy was providing enough info for making it work.

But still, this only works on Win95, not NT.

>From what I had read in an article about the undocumented namespace
APIs, the pIDL created for the %I argument points to a shared stack on
Win95, so as to allow any instance of explorer/shell32.dll to be able to
access it -- as a side effect, even the copy of shell32.dll attached to
my own program can access it for converting it.

OTOH, it is also (un)documented that NT doesn't need this hack so the
pIDL points at a protected space in the process's heap that can only be
accessed by explorer: when my program asks shell32.dll to convert it, it
always cause an EAccessViolation exception in shell32.dll

So the original purpose of this thread could be done, but only on Win95
(and Win98, I suppose). Making it work on NT would probably at least
require writing a real OLE inproc DLL for handling the context menu
instead of an external command-line utility, and I'm not even sure if
that would be enough...

> 
> I think that would be extremely useful.
>

As it seems to me, it would only be a nice gadget for the purpose of
starting VNCviewer toward a computer. For this, I'm using another way: I
made a "C:\WINDOWS\LNK\" folder which is added at the end of my PATH; I
fill it with shortcuts renamed to a relevant "keyword".

For instance, I put in it a shortcut to a "foobar-5900.VNC" file, and
rename that shortcut "vncfoobar". Now, all I need to do is WIN+R for
bringing up the Start|Run dialog, type in "vncfoobar" and ENTER, and I'm
VNControlling the "foobar" computer. The same thing could be done with a
batch file for providing any computer name as an argument -- I find this
way far more quick&practical than having to browse the NetHood,
right-click a computer and pick a contextmenu item...

-- 
JCS - Jean-Christophe SERRE - INGECOM France - +33 (0)1.48.34.12.34

Titanic was ultimately sunk by the only true unsinkable thingy
on our planet -- a big ice cube. Titanic couldn't face
too cold water. (Alain Turgeon)
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